The Challenges of the Second Scene...

     Now that I have gone over scene 1, you already know what the deal is. We filmed scene 2 first due to the timing and how scene 2 had to take place during the day. I did not know how much time it would take to film scene 1 and if we would have enough time before the sun went down... yahtah, yahtah, yahtah. That's boring and lowkey just a recap of the last blog post and I know that you all read the last post so yeah... ok... let's start getting to the new stuff.

LETS GO

    Ok, so the main challenge of this scene was the sun. Let me explain. So, the sun outside on Saturday was strong as hell. Like brightly burning bright outside. It was painful for my eyes to be outside. It would have been a great day to go to the beach, but, not a great day to film with a painfully average camera. For every shot, it's like I had to choose between lighting Derek or lighting the background. This was a problem. But, fortunately, I find solutions. So, let me explain the solution to this problem and one more challenge that arose that the solution to the previous problem could not solve.

    The last part of the last paragraph probably made no sense, but, let me explain. I found the solution to the first problem. It was the reflector. I was shooting with Wesley (the actor playing Derek) facing towards the house, in which the trees in front of my house blocked the sunshine of the sun, leaving Wesley dark with a normal background. But, if I turned up the ISO (basically the camera's brightness function), Wesley's face would be normal, but, the background would be bright. I did not want any of these options. But, the first option is the most probable. This is because, using the reflector, I could hold the reflector in the sun and aim the rays back at Wesley's face, making his face light up. Problem solved! Granted, the shot looks like Wesley is placed in front of a green screen, where the background seems separated from himself, but it is the best I could do with my current equipment and experience. But, I am still proud of myself for coming up with a solution.

    Unfortunately, the problems don't stop there. The second part of the scene happens on my front porch, where Wesley faces my door and drops off a letter. The problem is that Wesley is facing the door, so, there is no way to get sunshine on his face. This is an issue because my shots that I wanted to shoot relied on Wesley's face being in the frame. However, I could not film those shots now and needed to pivot. On the spot, I needed to be creative and come up with new shots to replace the old ones, without showing Wesley's face because of the uneven exposure of the previous shots I had in mind. I ended up shooting a lot of close-ups. Close-ups of mainly the letter in his hand as he walks towards the door and close-ups of the letter as he drops it on the doorstep. I tried getting plenty of angles and I thought I did pretty well in doing that. I just wish I could have fixed in somehow in production, even though I do not think it would be possible with my current equipment. But I realize that it's ok. This is a student production and I realize that there are going to be many problems with my end result that are simply out of my control. I know that and I am fine with it. I bet I am still going to be happy with the final result, no matter what critiques are thrown my way.

On the Set of Scene 2

    Those were the issues that I had with the production of the second scene. Problems are bound to happen on every production and I felt like I did pretty good overcoming the solutions in this scene. I am proud of myself for that. Enough of me ranting, I am going to be leaving now. I will be seing you all in the near future. Seeyah!